[Dixielandjazz] Some off beat OKOM in NYC.

[Steve Barbone]

Not Dixieland so delete now if not interested in other forms of OKOM.
Otherwise, here are some off beat NYC performances that are worth seeing.

Howard Fishman is an acoustic guitarist/songwriter/bandleader who enjoys The
Great American Songbook and also playing with New Orleans Brass Bands.

Allen Toussaint, more toward R & B, is one of the most influential singers,
pianists, songwriters, arrangers and producers on the current music scene in
New Orleans.

Elaine Stritch is a national treasure. Her story speaks for itself below.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



HOWARD FISHMAN (Saturday) Rummaging through the attic of American song,
Howard Fishman finds witty insights in Dixieland, swing and bluegrass. At 10
p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718)
965-9177, barbesbrooklyn.com; $10 suggested donation.

ALLEN TOUSSAINT (Tuesday through Thursday) Mr. Toussaint, the great New
Orleans musical statesman, who wrote ³Working in the Coal Mine² and ³Fortune
Teller,² has been a frequent sight in New York over the last year or so,
playing Sunday brunch gigs at Joe¹s Pub that have benefited Hurricane
Katrina relief. Next week he makes his Blue Note debut. (Through Jan. 12.)
At 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, Greenwich Village,
(212) 475-8592, bluenote.net; $35 cover at tables, $20 at the bar.


One Tough Dame Tells Heartfelt Tales

NY TIMES  - By STEPHEN HOLDEN - January 4, 2008

Take away the sets, the costumes, the props, the special effects: It all
comes down to storytelling. The ground-level reality of show-business magic
is the ability to spin a spellbinding yarn anytime, anywhere. Elaine Stritch
has it at her fingertips.

If it¹s a great yarn, it bears repeating again and again. It is all the more
delicious if the story and the stories within the story are true. Even if
you know them by heart, it is how they¹re told. We the audience become
wide-eyed children, begging the verbal magician at whose lap we sit
enraptured to tell it one more time. ³Please, please, please, tell us about
the time you. ...² And if the storyteller is as enthralled with her own
tales as her listeners, they collaborate in a fantasy that could last a
thousand and one nights.

That is the delightful lesson taught by Ms. Stritch in her revival at the
Café Carlyle of ³Elaine Stritch at Liberty,² the Broadway show she wrote
with John Lahr that won her a special Tony Award in 2002. This salty
autobiographical reminiscence, marinated in gin, may be the ultimate example
of amusing after-dinner remarks sprinkled with songs and a few dance steps
that transcends the occasion. Ms. Stritch is accompanied by a six-member
band under the direction of her excellent longtime pianist, Rob Bowman.

The experience of the show at the Café Carlyle, where it plays through Jan.
19, is far more intimate than in a theater. Amazingly lithe (she turns 83 on
Feb. 2), Ms. Stritch isn¹t required to stalk the stage with a chair. Yet
every story in her arsenal of seamlessly stitched personal anecdotes is
illustrated with body language that erupts like lightning out of words
spoken in the gravelly voice of a tough old dame with a tender heart.
Because she has the gift of gab, this loudmouthed life of the party could go
on forever. 

At the cafe the visual center of the show is Ms. Stritch¹s mobile clown face
under a cloud of white ringlets. With blazing blue eyes and a feral smile
Ms. Stritch, who strides to the stage in black tights and a white shirt,
plays the lion queen of show business, dropping legendary names ‹ Marlon
Brando, Ethel Merman, Rock Hudson, Noël Coward, Richard Burton ‹ with the
enthusiasm of a star-struck fan. She is proud to have rubbed shoulders,
shared stages and sipped cocktails with Olympians: the Jupiters, Junos,
Apollos and Venuses of a bygone show business pantheon that was far loftier
than today¹s celebutante-tainted culture of fame.

For a show that examines show-business glamour at close range ³Elaine
Stritch at Liberty² is remarkably lacking in introspection. The one dark
thread that runs through her narrative is her battle with alcoholism, which
ends in victory. Instead of the familiar clinical analysis of cause and
effect, family background and psychological factors, booze, which she began
consuming in her early teens, is remembered fondly as a friend she brought
with her onto the stage for comfort and protection. Eventually it turned
against her, although we don¹t learn anything specific about her reaching
rock bottom.

If Ms. Stritch has always exuded fearlessness, she lets it be known that her
bravado is just a facade. The friend she brought with her, carefully
rationed out so that she could function in the limelight, insulated her from
stage fright and loneliness. As the show goes on, the sadly familiar picture
of the female star who finds herself alone at the end of a glamorous evening
looms like a deepening shadow.

Ms. Stritch may not have the lung power to belt a signature song like ³The
Ladies Who Lunch² with the accusatory fury with which she delivered it in
the original cast of ³Company.² But she finds ingenious new ways to claim it
as her own. Today it comes across more as an ambiguous looking-back song
than a transfixing explosion of anger. ³I¹m Still Here,² understated almost
until the end, evokes the world-weariness of a star who has seen and done it
all and is more impressed with her own survival than with any of her past
misadventures. 

She still brings enough brass to Coward¹s ³I¹ve Been to a Marvelous Party²
and ³Why Do the Wrong People Travel?² to give their refined chitchat a
critical edge.

More than ever, the musical moment that anchors the show at the end of Act I
is Coward¹s ³If Love Were All,² wound around the Gershwins¹ ³But Not for
Me.² Coward¹s wistful, civilized disavowal of romantic love (³The more you
give your trust/The more you¹re bound to lose²), followed by his ruthless
self-assessment (³But I believe that since my life began/The most I¹ve had
is just/A talent to amuse²), punctures all Ms. Stritch¹s high-flying
braggadocio. The fact that this bittersweet moment of self-awareness erupts
from such an extreme extrovert is a beautifully set-up show-business trick
that doesn¹t make her revelation any less poignant.

³Elaine Stritch at Liberty ... at the Carlyle² continues through Jan. 19 at
the Café Carlyle, the Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, Manhattan; (212)
744-1600.